Tag Archives: jobs

No Recent Grad Open Source Jobs for Non-Rockstars

Posted on by

As I continue my job search, I realized the difficulty of finding open source jobs for recent graduates. Especially if you aren’t a rockstar programmer. Unless people know you, and you worked on a high profile open source project, there seems no real way of working in the open source business.

Open source businesses have started to rock the software industry. Software companies either want to convert to open source or want to stomp it out completely. Apparently companies want to protect themselves from the downturn of the economy, by hiring recent graduates who are cheaper to erm… maintain pay-wise. I don’t see lots of people wanting to hire lots of recent CS graduates with open source experience. Unless they are rockstars in the open source world already.

In my case, maybe its just that Toronto is oblivious to open source in general. Or maybe its my bad luck. But looks like my only way of getting hired on open source, if I can work at Red Hat, IBM or Sun Microsystems. That doesn’t look likely though.

I don’t have the time right now to rise to rockstar FOSS programmer status right now. I need a job sooner than later.

Is there any hope of a FOSS career for someone like me?

Productization of Self

Posted on by

Wonder where I have been in the past few days? Still job hunting and figuring how best to market myself to prospective employers. Its not easy for a few reasons.

First, is most people don’t learn about how to do this sort of thing until they hit unemployment line. I for one don’t claim to have figured out job searching. Second, being a recent student without a ton of certifications or years of work experience doesn’t help matters. These first two dilemmas will only resolve themselves after I am employed.

Third I am still trying to decide what kind of job I want and in which sector. And often what I want to do and what is possible are at odds. Example I want to work on open source games in the GTA. Its not gonna happen, at least not anytime soon. I also want to become an astronaut, but am neither a pilot nor a scientist. Reality unfortunately bounds my ambitions into a significantly smaller space. Right now, I am looking into openings that match my skill set, or companies that match my err… interests.

I do have a few possible leads. But I need something more concrete then that. Nothing but to press onwards till success. Wish me luck.